


The Funerals

by lily_lovely



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-30
Updated: 2009-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-03 15:38:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lily_lovely/pseuds/lily_lovely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tara's funeral isn't when they put her in the ground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Funerals

There was never really just one funeral for Tara.

There was, of course, the moment when they all came to see her buried, headstone and all, in the same graveyard as Buffy's mother and countless other victims.

It was ironic how the person who had loved her best couldn't be there, because of the death that had sprung from that love.

The rest of them came dressed in black and solemnity, bearing flowers, to watch while her body was lowered into the ground. This was the moment when a priest said blessings, and everybody cried, and then everybody hugged.

And then she was covered in dirt by someone who never knew her, and they left.

But that moment was not her funeral.

Her funerals came when they mourned her, separately, alone, during the summer between destruction and anticipation of destruction. When the people who knew her remembered her life and thought about her death.

Only in the aftermath after the aftermath could they find time to truly consider their grief.

***  
Her father picked up the phone. "Who is this?" he asked, staring blankly at the counter. No one ever called here; who could it be?

He listened as the little girl who had once called herself Tara's family quietly explained that his daughter was dead. A stray bullet, she told him. He had been trying to hit me, and he did, but I survived, she said.

He slammed the phone down into the receiver, quivering with anger.

Wasn't even meant for her? How could she have been killed by a bullet that hadn't even been meant for her?

And a bullet? It wasn't as if she'd lived in a gang neighborhood; just a sleepy little college town.

It struck him as strange that there was no way to tell that she was gone. His life looked exactly the same. His daily business wouldn't change at all.

For the first time since her mother died, he cried.

***  
Willow sat despondently in her room at the coven, staring out at nothing. It was what she did most of the time when she wasn't learning from the other witches.

She could see her mostly unpacked suitcase from where she sat on the bed. She'd taken out her clothing and toiletries, but most of her things were still in there.

She walked over to the corner and opened it. Rummaging past the hastily-packed books and packets of Kleenex, she pulled out the photo album she hadn't been able to look at since...

…well, _then_.

She flipped through the pages, feeling herself smile even as her throat swelled up and her eyes started to burn. The memories hit her:

Tara shyly smiling at the camera, face almost completely hidden by curtains of hair. It had been only weeks after they'd met.

Tara lying on a towel at the beach, sunglasses perched on her forehead, one-piece tastefully hugging her curves. She had gotten a nasty all-over sunburn, because she'd forgotten to re-apply her sunscreen. It had earned her days of soup and sympathy, and had scared her off the beach for months.

Tara dressed as a medieval lady, complete with long velvet dress and French-braided hair, collapsed in a dramatic swoon into Willow's arms, who was wearing her old Joan of Arc outfit. They'd been fooling around with the camera before going to a Halloween party at Buffy's.

Tara wearing a polka-dotted party hat and grinning goofily with an arm around Dawn. It had been Dawn's sixteenth birthday party.

Tara, gorgeous and completely naked, giving a sultry come-hither look, propped up on an elbow with her chin in her hand.

Then Tara with a sheet wrapped about her, sparkling with afterglow. Her arms were around Willow, who was holding out the camera to take the picture.

The last two made Willow blink traitorous tears away.

They had been taken hours before Tara died.

Willow felt her grief wash over her again, but for the first time, it was tinged with a little happiness, actually remembering how beautiful Tara had been, instead of just how _gone_ she was.

A ghost of a laugh stirred inside her as she thought about the woman she missed so damn much.

It felt almost like a blessing...

...but she was scared it would never come again.

***  
Dawn went into her room with the same knife she'd used when she'd found out who she really was: just some mystical energy thing.

She opened the window and opened her veins to the bright summer sky, letting the blood drip down onto the roof.

It felt appropriate. After all, this time she had discovered just how alone she was.

Willow had tried to kill her and now she was off in England for however long, and Tara was gone forever. And maybe she still had Buffy and Xander, but...it wasn't the same. They were too distant and weary to give her any comfort.

It didn't even feel real to her until she felt the blade slide under her skin.

That's when she knew she wasn't dreaming, when she realized with a start that she was alive.

And that's when she died a little on the inside.

***  
Anya wondered why this made her feel so much more aware of her own mortality.

She was going through the things in the Magic Box, trying to salvage what she could after Willow had so rudely destroyed it, when she felt it. The vague specter of death floating around her.

It didn't make any sense. She was a vengeance demon; if you weren't D'Hoffryn, it would require a two-edged battle ax, a trio of witches, and five packets of cloves to kill her.

But it _was_ possible. And if she was made human again, she'd be so very easy to kill.

It frightened her so badly that she stayed up at night thinking of all the ways she could die.

And then she would realize how selfish she was being, and cry, and wish Tara was still around to teach her how to _not_ be so selfish.

Because really, who else could?

***  
Giles kept dreaming about her.

The sweet, innocent girl who had called him "Mr. Giles". Who had transformed the girl he considered a daughter from a sobbing wretch of grief into a smiling, giggling, joyful woman. Whose loss had turned that girl into a pathetic, controlling addict, and then into a homicidal monster.

In his dreams, she would smile, and tell him that everything would be fine. It made him feel better for a few minutes, but it only made him hurt more when he woke up.

He wondered if any of them would ever be as happy as they'd been before, without her. Her death seemed to mark the destruction of hope, the end of the world that Willow had fruitlessly tried to bring about.

He wondered if he should tell Willow that it had been too late when she tried; that the world had already ended before her hair went black, but he figured that she, of all people, knew that.

He didn't think any of them would ever be the same.

But as he pulled out another glass of Scotch, sitting in the lonely, dark room he had at the coven, he thought they would have to try.

Because trying was all they _could_ do.

***  
Buffy saw Tara's body whenever she closed her eyes. She was the victim she couldn't save, the girl who died and died and died and never came back.

The one who took her bullet. Who took another death from her, who flew away so Buffy could remain.

Sometimes she hates Tara for that.

Because how is this fair? Who should die: the one who's been there twice before, who's kind of always wanted it, who'd literally be replaced by another girl after she's gone?

Or the one who'd just found love again, who'd suddenly a life full of possibilities stretching out before her, who's so irreplaceable she's turned all of them into ghosts?

And then sometimes she'd love Tara for being the one to go. The thought made her sick inside, but right then she didn't want to give up her life.

And she'd be grateful that Tara was the one to die.

That's when it made the least sense, and she had to open her eyes to stop seeing the body, to stop thinking about how very wrong it all was.

***  
Xander saw how everyone around him was falling apart, and it made him fall apart, too.

Dawn had mysterious bandages on her arms, Buffy walked around like she didn't even know where she was. Anya had seemed stunned and confused the one time he saw her. The first time Giles called, he had actually lost his composure and _cried_.

Willow hadn't called, and that scared him most of all; he had no idea what she was feeling like right now. What if she was going to try to destroy the world again?

Not that there was that much going for it right now, with the loss and the pain and the suffering, but it seemed like stopping her would be the proper thing to do.

Everyone was hurting, and he couldn't help but wish they could take it all back. Even if it meant a life for a life, he'd do it.

But no spell would work here, not even the one that had brought Buffy back, and all that was left was weeping.

All that was left was _them_.


End file.
